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Failure Quotes

Nothing here is flagged as misattributed. Shakespeare, the judge Lord Ellenborough, Ben Carson and Frederick William Robertson lead, and the sourced lines are all older and drier than the usual motivational material. Wilde, in Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892), says experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes, and in 1894 that ambition is the last refuge of the failure. Burns’s Scots Musical Museum (1787) has the bleakest of the three: now all is done that men can do, and all is done in vain.

If you came for the line about failing and trying again, you will not find it here. Try the Success page.

Random quote on Failure

Most quoted on failure:

In God's world, for those who are in earnest there is no failure. No work truly done, no word earnestly spoken, no sacrifice freely made, was ever made in vain.

Frederick William Robertson

"All honor to him who shall win the prize,"
The world has cried for a thousand years;
But to him who tries, and who fails and dies,
I give great honor and glory and tears. Give glory and honor and pitiful tears
To all who fail in their deeds sublime;
Their ghosts are many in the van of years,
They were born with Time in advance of Time.

Joaquin Miller

Just remember that even the most successful lives have chapters of failure.

Og Mandino

The road to wisdom? — Well, it's plain
and simple to express:
Err
and err
and err again
but less
and less
and less.

Piet Hein

He who has conquered is not conqueror
Unless the conquered one confesses it.

Ennius

My heartache, is my mistake you see.

Ed Harcourt

It is not because the truth is too difficult to see that we make mistakes. It may even lie on the surface; but we make mistakes because the easiest and most comfortable course for us is to seek insight where it accords with our emotions — especially selfish ones.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Peace and Violence (1973)

Life, like war, is a series of mistakes; and he is not the best Christian nor the best general who makes the fewest false steps. Poor mediocrity may secure that; but he is the best who wins the most splendid victories by the retrieval of mistakes. Forget mistakes; organize victory out of mistakes.

Frederick William Robertson Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. In this life we get nothing save by effort. Freedom from effort in the present merely means that there has been stored up effort in the past.

Theodore Roosevelt The Strenuous Life: Essays and Addresses (1900)

All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

Samuel Beckett Worstward Ho (1983)

Allow me to offer my congratulations on the truly admirable skill you have shown in keeping clear of the mark. Not to have hit once in so many trials, argues the most splendid talents for missing.

Thomas De Quincey

Everyone thinks I'm a smart arse who can solve any bloody problem. [...] I'm not. I'm just a very old businessman and a very experienced businessman who made every mistake in the book and can recognise one when I see one.

John Harvey-Jones

If failure has the strength to turn your life into bitterness itself, then patience has the strength to turn your life into the sweetest joy. Do not surrender to fate after a single failure. Failure, at most, precedes success.

Sri Chinmoy Songs of the Soul (1971)

And certainly it was not wrong to try to secure freedom for our citizens held in barbaric captivity. But we did not achieve what we wished, and serious mistakes were made in trying to do so. We will get to the bottom of this, and I will take whatever action is called for.

Ronald Reagan

I can accept failure. Everyone fails at something. But I can't accept not trying [no hard work].
Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships. (p. 20, 24)

Michael Jordan

[Oxford] Home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs and unpopular names and impossible loyalties.

Matthew Arnold

To me the greatest moment in an experiment is always just before I learn whether the particular idea is a good or a bad one. Thus even a failure is exciting, and most of my ideas have of course been wrong. But this time it worked!

Ivar Giaever Nobel lecture (1973)

The acceptance of ambiguity implies more than the commonplace understanding that some good things and some bad things happen to us. It means that we know that good and evil are inextricably intermixed in human affairs; that they contain, and sometimes embrace, their opposites; that success may involve failure of a different kind, and failure may be a kind of triumph.

Sydney J. Harris Clearing the Ground (1986)

After it is all over, as stupid a fellow as I am can see that mistakes were made. I notice, however, that my mistakes are never told me until it is too late, and you, and all my officers, know that I am always ready and anxious to have their suggestions.

Robert E. Lee

Perhaps its destruction has been brought about only that it may be raised up again to a better destiny. Oftentimes a reverse has but made room for more prosperous fortune. Many structures have fallen only to rise to a greater height.

Seneca the Younger

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